01 July 2013 3:20 PM

Here We Go Again - The Tory Pledge of a Marriage Tax Allowance

With a yawn and a shrug, I note that Mr Slippery is once again dangling his marriage tax allowance before his ever-shrinking rump of voters and supporters. This follows a brief outbreak of equally unconvincing John Bull imitations last week, when he pretended to have a had a row in Brussels, and noisily denounced a children’s colouring book illustrating a day in the life of an MEP. That'll show those EU johnnies).

I cannot definitively trace Mr Cameron’s pledge of a tax break to married couples any further back than June 2005, when (during his interestingly long campaign for the Tory leadership, which he wouldn’t have won if it had been a short campaign) he told the Policy Exchange think tank that it was right to use the law and the tax and benefits system to encourage people to stay together.

This was eclipsed by 2007 by George Osborne’s costly promises on inheritance tax (what exactly happened to them?) , which successfully frightened Gordon Brown out of holding an election. By December 2009 the allowance was back and had become a specific plan to offer tax breaks worth about £150 a year to married couples. I say a *plan* because, soon after it was announced, it was savaged by the single-parent lobby, who heckled Mr Cameron and said it was discriminatory’ (which of course would have been the whole point of it).

Thereupon it became a ‘hope’, though it was later upgraded to a promise of action during this (2010-2015) Parliament (one which the Liberal Democrats were specifically exempted from supporting in the Coalition Agreement, which is an interesting sort of conditional or perhaps forlorn hope). I seem to recall that it has been dragged up a few times since, whenever Mr Cameron was in deep trouble with the collection of hypnotised buffers, in the media and at Westminster, who make up the so-called ‘right-wing’ of the Tory Party, and who can be endlessly fooled by the same tricks, symbolic gestures of no value which are in many cases never implemented (referendums in the distant future, alleged vetoes of EU measures which have never actually been proposed) or greatly delayed and of no value in any case (the departure of the Tories from the EPP in Brussels was another one of these. When it was at last accomplished it turned out to be what it had obviously been from the start, futile).

Now, with UKIP continuing to grow quietly at Tory expense, and awaiting only the Euro elections next year to do Mr Cameron some more damage, here comes the marriage tax allowance again. This time it is garlanded with political correctness because it must obviously apply to same-sex marriages as well as to heterosexual ones. This (as has not been noted) will make it harder for the other politically correct lobby (the single parent family one) to attack it.

I think it’s also being denied, in this version, to ‘Higher Rate’ taxpayers, a categorysupposedly made up of greedy plutocrats, but which now includes a huge and growing part of the population. For the ‘Higher rate’ is rapidly, thanks to not being uprated in line with inflation, becoming the new Standard Rate. That won’t make Polly Toynbee happy, exactly. But it may make her less unhappy.

I don’t know if there’s a majority for this measure in our present House of Commons and I don’t much care. Left wingers who jeer that nobody will get married, or stay married, for the sake of £150 a year, are quite right. The plan was always a gesture without substance, which is why it exists at all.

A real reform would start with the current divorce laws, a scandalous state of affairs which makes every husband in the country permanently vulnerable to the unilateral dissolution of marriage (wives are equally vulnerable in law to one-sided divorce, but they are far more likely to end up with the house and the children , regardless of their behaviour, so it is the husbands who are much more exposed in most cases); and which puts the state on the side of the party to a marriage who wants to dissolve it, rather than on the side of the party who wants to maintain it.

This is the influence which has led to the destruction of many marriages which would otherwise have endured, and which reduces the number of future marriages, because it deters many men from embarking on a course which is horribly likely to end in disaster. This encourages unmarried cohabitation. Quite enough is already done by the tax and benefits system, and by our culture, to encourage the formation of fatherless households.

The abolition of the old marriage tax allowance was never crucial in this process of dismantling lifelong marriage (though there was a long stage in the Thatcher era when unmarried couples could get twice the tax relief on mortgages that married couples could get, which, I suspect, deterred quite a lot of people from getting married) . It was and is the 1969 Divorce Law Reform Act, plus the wholly amoral case law on property and custody which has followed it (see the chapter ‘Difficulties with Girls’ in my ‘The Abolition of Britain’) which has hollowed out the institution of marriage in this country. Until someone is prepared to re-examine that law, which indulged adults at the expense of children, nothing much will change.

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In reply to Mr Dodd
Just imagine how much more she would love you if you could keep a extra £150 of your hard earned per anum.
@ John Blanche.
As a married man of 6 years. Well one has to start in single figures . Not quite past the dreaded 7 year itch. Mr Hayes 37 years that's a long time . Me coming up this Christmas to 50 years. A very long time . We argue, she wins .A simple context on all marriages. Never go to bed angry .unless of course your golf score that afternoon was a bad one.

As a married man of nearly six years I can vouch for the advantages of the institution. It has always seemed to me, though, that these are self evident and therefore do not need a government sweetener. To argue, as many on the right do, that marriage is wonderful but we still have to bung people a few quid to make sure they actually march up the aisle is surely contradictory.

You are right to tweak the left's tail about gay marriage though. Many a Guardianista likes to parade their scepticism about traditional marriage whilst simultaneously getting very excited about the thought of homosexuals tying the knot.

Echoing Nick Clegg, Tony Dodd asks why single people should subsidise married couples.

Whenever tax laws change it is to the advantage of some and the disadvantage of others. If Nick Clegg thinks it is unfair for one group to “subsidise” another then I look forward to his campaign to end child benefit payments; after all, why should the childless subsidise those that have procreated?

"Having two earners per couple instead of one" effectively almost doubled the labour supply. The consequence to real wages is obvious. It's sad that children are farmed out to institutionalised care in pursuit of an economic illusion. Cui bono?

I don't want to be bribed with my own money to stay married. I do that anyway (37 years this month) because I made a solemn promise and because my wife and I need and care for each other. I want the government to stop robbing me through levels of taxation that amount to theft in order to subsidise the unnatural, damaging and ineficient practice of people having children in uncommitted and serial relationships.

We all know its a disaster and couldn't exist at this level without subsidy. I don't consent to this subsidy but if I withold tax I will be imprisoned. And the single parent lobby and sexual revolutionaries want government to stop interfering in people's private lives? If only they would.

Perhaps this latest cynical ploy by Mr Cameron is a reaction to the Fragmented Families Report published by the Centre of Social justice which you highlighted in your blog a week or so ago, since Cameron's comments follow so closely on publication of the report. I read the Executive Summary of the Report and it was fairly damning of both the Coalition's promises to support the institution of marriage, and the repercussions on society of broken families. Of course 'fiddling' with a few pounds here and there in favour of married couples is hardly an enticement to keep married couples together or go anywhere nearing repairing the damage done to family life, which let's face it, has been in continual decline since the 1960s because of regressive legislation on the part of successive governments of both colours - some of which you allude to here.

@tony dodd
Our whole tax system is rotten to the core. The hoi polio pat thru PAYE, the rich employ tax lawyer or accountants to pay the least possible. And in a few case they even avoid paying what their consultants advise.
Plus of course these tax consultants come as a tax deductible . Another group get tax credits, although never having worked, seems a strange misnomer .
So the ugly and shy are no different. Unless rich .But then rich uglies, and rich shy always have very attractive eye candy on their arms,
Which one are you sir.

There is another group of people who would be adversely discriminated against by such a proposed tax change.
i refer to those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to find partners to marry. This may be due to physical appearance, or crippling shyness. Why should these unhappy people have to subsidise the more fortunate?

On a related matter, tax individualization was introduced in Ireland in 2000 and it discriminates (in the width of tax bands) against single-income couples as opposed to couples where both are working. I imagine this is also the case in Britain as they would hardly dream up such a thing here all by themselves. This of course puts the traditional family arrangement, where the wife looks after the children at home, at a disadvantage. I don't remember much discussion of the issue at the time and it was presumably done to encourage (to use the jargon) increased participation in the workforce, but of course it is also another step on the road to the liberal utopia. Of course, having two earners per couple instead of one merely leads to increased house prices, seeing as the price of a house always rises to whatever a bank is prepared to lend against it, so everyone is worse off (unless your rent is being paid for you).

John Vernau

I read the Russell essay but was not persuaded. In fact its only real interest was the glimpse it allows into the thought processes of eighty years ago. John's quote from Russell the other day here was more enlightening - if people believe that existence is ultimately meaningless then it is hard to expect them to behave or even look after themselves. And the urgings of psychologists to face (and no doubt 'embrace') reality aren't very attractive.

It's a big task but I've seen my daughter's generation being fed the mantra that marriage is outdated who needs it. That many young women who are in what they think are going to be long term cohabiting relationships get a big shock when they seek advice as to where they stand in law. Especially if their children are not their partners children and their name is not on the mortgage. They don't think it will ever happen.
I've seen couples who are intending to marry who do find they are expecting early and it has always happened but lots used to get married, but my daughter's generation were encouraged to go it alone in the flat and they would be better off if partner stayed mostly with mum.
It seems to me in today's society normal families with traditional values are being undermined even more today on all sorts of liberal laws, drinking drugs, gambling, porn and celebrity influence and it's getting worse than even when mine were teens.
Then single women who have their partner to stay on the sly and those with children living apart to get more money.
Yet trying to get support in the tax system returned for responsible single breadwinner families to care for their own before school and not put a burden on nursery places is despised.
Now today I was listening to the Matthew Wright show and they read out an article and I can't remember which paper but I'm sure it will grab the headlines that a couple marrying in a register office in Tower Hamlets were told they can't use the words in sickness and in health or to have and to hold, because it's too religious...WHAT.
Coming after the idea that men can now be wives and women husbands, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I salute Mr Hitchens' efforts to retard the breakdown of traditional values. It is possible that if enough symptoms are alleviated the disease will be cured. This is optimistic.

As Mr Hitchens has pointed out about gun control, mass shootings are a recent phenomenon. The prevalence of guns hasn't changed, rather something about the people using them. I would argue that the same principle can be seen in other characteristics of our society. There have always been drugs but now people choose to use them. People are uninterested in marriage--they no longer accept commitment. Many don't even want to reproduce; about as nihilistic a statement about our civilization as could be imagined.

I recommend Bertrand Russell's 1930 essay "On Youthful Cynicism", which gives a possible explanation of why this thinking is, or was, peculiar to the west. It is evident that many of the ideas underpinning it were current in the early 20th century. It can be partially understood, I think, as a development of Romanticism modified by the grim truths of the Great War.

To stop the flood by plugging each separate leak in the dyke looks to be very hard work and will perhaps prove futile. But to do nothing is to accept futility itself.

Mr. Hitchens, I agree wholeheartedly and despise being treated so cynically by this poor excuse for a government and I couldn't help but drag out this quote from Burke - ' ... But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed.'

After the earnest 'conviction politics' of prime ministers like Margaret Thatcher and her various wannabe successors, we now have in David Cameron a new phenomenon. 'Convection politics'.

That's where a politician spends all day scanning the skies for the next rising warm air current that he can hopefully latch onto in an attempt to soar a little higher in the polls and at the same time prolong his term in office, before the inevitable fall back to earth.

Like gliding itself it's an exhilarating and enjoyable pastime but serves no useful purpose beyond the amusement of the pilot since, with few exceptions the whole aim of gliding is to fly about a bit and when you get bored with that, land safely exactly where you took off.

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